Sandwiched between Kazakhstan to the north and Uzbekistan to the south, this is the dying Aral Sea. Wikipedia says: Since the 1960s the Aral Sea has been shrinking, as the rivers that feed it (the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya) were diverted by the Soviet Union for irrigation. In 1960, the Aral Sea was the world’s fourth-largest lake, but today it has lost 80% of its volume. You can clearly see how much the water has receeded recently by comparing the satellite image with Google’s own map view (there’s no high-resolution imagery, otherwise we might be able…